Doctors get a lot of flak these days without ever going near a battle zone. They are bombarded with accusations of not caring about their patients, of being shills for Big Pharma, of being motivated by money, of killing patients with medical errors and drug side effects. In addition, they are bombarded with claims that non-scientific medical systems (so-called alternative medicine, from chiropractic to Ayurveda) offer greater benefits to patients.

It was a delight to read a new book about a doctor who was exposed to real flak in Iraq. His story is a wonderful reminder of how effective modern medicine is and it is an eye-opener about the selfless dedication of doctors who put themselves in harm’s way; who accept lower incomes, separation from families, and poor living conditions; who care desperately about their patients; and who magnanimously apply the same skills to treating friend and foe.

The title is Coppola: A Pediatric Surgeon in Iraq. The author, Chris Coppola, is an Air Force pediatric surgeon who was twice deployed to Balad Air Base, 50 miles north of Baghdad, as a trauma surgeon. In his first night on call, he treats the five worst gunshot injuries he has ever seen – and they are all in the same patient! Despite serious damage to liver, colon, small intestine, pancreas, duodenum, vena cava and spine, the patient, a 22 year old Iraqi policeman, recovers. As the foreword of the book explains, the survival rate for troops injured in the field was 20% in WWI, 40% in WWII, 66% in Viet Nam, and is now an astounding 97% in Iraq. Lessons learned in war are translated to civilian trauma care and we all benefit from the knowledge however much we may deplore the war.

No subluxations were adjusted, no qi manipulated, no acupuncture points stimulated, no homeopathic or herbal medicines given. Beside numbers like these, alternative medicine looks pretty puny and irrelevant. And the Air Force’s initiative to train doctors in battlefield acupuncture looks frankly delusional. (more…)

For a change of pace, I want to step back from medicine for this post, although, as you will see (I hope), the study I’m going to discuss has a great deal of relevance to the topics covered regularly on this blog. One of the most frustrating aspects of being a skeptic and championing science-based medicine is just how unyielding belief in pseudscience is. Whatever realm of science in which there is pseudoscience I wander into, I find beliefs that simply will not yield to science or reason. Whether it be creationism, quackery such as homeopathy, the anti-vaccine movement, the “9/11 Truth” movement, moon hoaxers, or any of a number of pseudoscientific movements and conspiracy theories, any skeptic who ventures into discussions of such a topic with believers will become very frustrated very fast. It takes a lot of tenacity to keep going back to the well to argue the same points over and over again and refute the same nonsense you’ve refuted over and over again. Many do not have sufficient stick-to-it-iveness, leading them to throw up their hands and withdraw from the fight.

Although some of us here have blamed this phenomenon on “cultishness” and, make no mistake, I do think that there is an element of that in many of these movement, particularly the anti-vaccine movements, cultishness alone can’t explain why people hold on so hard to beliefs that are clearly not supported by science or evidence, such as the belief that vaccines are responsible for an “autism epidemic.” Then last week, what should pop up in the newsfeeds that I regularly monitor but a rather interesting article in Science Daily entitled How We Support Our False Beliefs. It was a press release about a study1 that appeared a few months ago in Sociological Inquiry, and the the study was described thusly:(more…)